814 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



action on some animal, say rabbits. We find always tbat the first and 

 second produce identical results— those of snake-poisoning, while the third 

 is always harmless. It follows that the fluid venom contains some 

 material which can be extracted by the use of absolute alcohol, and to 

 which the venom owes its virulent power. The next question whioh 

 naturally arises is, what is the nature of this material? A series of 

 chemical experiments showed that it belongs to the class of substances 

 formed of a combination of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and 

 sulphur, to which chemists have given the name of proteids, and of whioh 

 a very good example is albumin, or white of egg. That the poisonous 

 effect is due only to the presence of these albuminous substances is proved 

 by the fact that everything, such as absolute alcohol, whioh removes the 

 former from the venom, renders what is left behind perfectly harmless. If, 

 also, we subject the venom to conditions— such, for example, as long 

 boiling — which are known to alter and decompose proteids, then the 

 virulent is changed into a harmless fluid. There are a considerable 

 number of these proteids or albuminous substances, and by careful 

 investigation Messrs. Martin and Smith discovered that the poisonous 

 element is associated with special forms known as albumoses. These 

 albumoses are substances made by the addition of the elements contained 

 in water to albumins, and are produced, for example, by the action of 

 gastric juice on an albumin, such as white of egg, taken in as food, or in 

 some not yet understood way by the action on albumin of the cells which 

 constitute different organs of the body. They are of great importance in 

 the case of various diseases, such as diphtheria. The diphtheria bacillus, 

 or germ, produces in the body a ferment which, when it comes in contact 

 with proteids taken in as food, forms out of them certain of these 

 albumoses, and it is the action of these which gives rise to the abnormal 

 conditions which we recognise as the disease diphtheria. So again, in a 

 slightly different way, the anthrax germ forms albumoses ; and it is most 

 suggestive to find an identity of structure in the poisonous elements 

 present in the case of diphtheria, anthrax, and other diseases, and in snake- 

 venom. In the poisonous snakes there is present a special poison-gland on 

 each side of the head, which consists of a mass of cells, by which the 

 venom is manufactured. The blood carries albuminous material to the 

 gland ; and here, Messrs. Martin and Smith suggest, the cells of the gland 

 exert some special direct influence on it, and so transform it into the 

 poisonous albumoses which, when the snake bites, pass down a little tube 

 to the poison-fang, and so into the animal bitten. 



